Uh... A Space Jockey sacrificed himself by drinking the black goo, which may or may not be the same goo we see later in the movie, which caused him to be disintegrated in cellular level. Thus, creating life on Earth or whatever that planet was. There really is nothing complicated about it if you ask me. Also, check the concept artbook of the movie. They actually planned to include an elder Jockey who gives the sacrifical one the black goo container.

Edit: From the article;

"Maybe this isn't the meaning behind this concept in Prometheus but it would make the most sense and gives them reason for a sequel. Especially since Elizabeth Shaw and David are now off to find the Engineers and ask them why they wanted to destroy life on Earth after they "created it."

No it wouldn't. Not necessarily. The movie can still have a sequel if what that sacrifical Jockey did turns out to be what most people think it is, which I explained above.

Guess what?! This is your opinion as much as this post has its own opinion in trying to connect the dots with other things said in the film to try and understand WHY the Engineers wanted to come back to Earth to end life on the planet. Also, no where is it said in this movie that the Engineer at the beginning of the film sacrificed himself. That's your assumption and as much of an opinion as this opinion post is too. Just sayin'.

Guess what? I never claimed that this was an actual fact. But I am guessing you are nothing but the bottomfeeder of the website which is the reason I have two disagrees in less than five minutes. Nice try though.

SPOILERS The reason why the Space Jockeys or engineers wanted to kill the human race is simple imo. It’s because we are toxic, greedy, obsessed with trying to reproduce ourselves and immortality.

The best scene witch demonstrates this is when Wayland, David and the scientist (keep forgetting her name in the movie) go to see the Jockey who is still hibernating. When they wake him up he almost looks surprised to see humans. Almost as if he wasn’t expecting them to reach their planet. When Wayland and the girl are fighting over what they want to ask him, the Engineer seams fascinated by the humans. But once he sees David and realises he’s a robot, you can see that the jockey is disgusted. Almost like he gets slapped in the face and remembers why he hates the humans in the first place… Because of our stupidity and obsession with immortality.

That’s the way I saw it. Sorry for my English by the way. The movie wasn’t what I was expecting, certainly not a prequel. It wasn’t bad, but it had way too many inconsistencies and plot wholes to say it was better then Alien or Aliens. Just the scenes were the head explodes or when the 3 guys crash the ship was completely stupid if you ask me. Oh and the fact that the Xenomorph was created in one day is just laughable (David gives the liquid to the guy, he f**ks the girl, then shes pregnant from that squid thing. Squid kills jokey, Xenomorph (most likely queen) comes out of his body). The scene witch I described (Jokey hibernating) and maybe the intro were the only things that were enjoyable if u ask me. The rest was meh for a Ridley Scott film, but this is probably the fault of the god dam movie analysts. I hope to see a directors cut for Prometheus in the future. Because for now, I don’t even consider the movie to be part of the Alien franchise.

I personally think the human race was made to experiment on but something happened to the before they could complete their mission. Since the human race was designed after the Engineers themselves they grew in knowledge and power.

I like the idea that Jesus was a space jockey and we killed him since it lines up with the time period.(they were going to Earth 2000 years before the film) The jockeys tested humans by sending him and we crucified him so they were going to destroy humanity for it. I love how ridiculous it sounds and if it's true some religious people will get pissed even though it's fiction.

The Engineers are under control of the aliens, and in fact the Engineers may have been created by the aliens. The aliens need the Engineers to gestate which is why they don't just kill them outright; the aliens use the Engineers to mother their young and to perform engineering tasks like piloting ships (and probably building them too). It's no coincidence that the alien at the end kills the Engineer by injecting part of itself into the Engineer through the Engineer's mouth - just like the alien did in the first part of the film with the human (botanist guy wearing glasses) and indeed to John Hurt's character Kane in the first alien film. All of this shows that the aliens breed/control Engineers as incubators for their young. This is the key key point. Unfortunately the gestation results in death for the carrier, so the aliens need a fresh supply of humans.

The aliens (not the Engineers) are in control, they are the ones who seed life throughout the galaxy using the Engineers. What kind of life? Well, they need humanoid life to sustain their own, so that's what they seed first. At the beginning of the film we see an Engineer who has been dropped off onto Earth by one of those big round spaceships with his task ahead of him - he has to disperse his DNA thoughout the Earth to seed life, specifically humanoid life. He does this by drinking that wierd black stuff (the same stuff that David slipped in the doctor's drink?)

The archaeologists uncover the same star-pattern all over the world from ancient races and comment 'it's as if they wanted us to find them'. This part is not explained, i.e. how all these images ended up all over the world, i.e. how all these ancient races received these images, but perhaps Earth was visited by the Engineers when human life evolved. Anyway, the message is clear - the aliens (and their slave Engineers), definitely DID want the Earth humans to find them.

When the humans (after millions of years of evolution) travel across space and enter the control room of the alien spaceship and wake up the Engineers, then guess what? That's a signal that human life on earth has evolved to the point that it could then sustain alien life. In other words Earth is now ripe - brimming with billions of humans who can now be incubators for the aliens. The control panel lights up and the 3-d starmap shows Earth in red - Earth is now the next destination for the aliens' progress.

When entering the ship at the end of the film, David is asked by one of the crew what the place is they are entering and he says "It's a cargo hold". We are also told and see that there are thousands of pods. From previous frames in the film, it seems to suggest that the pods are full of little worm like creatures whose intermediate stage is the white snake in the black soup that got the biologist guy wearing glasses. If the pods are full of worms then that's probably enough to take over the whole of Earth. Whatever is in the pods, the message is clear - that the ship is full of alien life and it is headed towards Earth.

So you are saying they made human life just to make something for the aliens to incubate in? But if that is the case how were the aliens controlling the engineers to do all this? And why in the end the thing that looks like the black aliens we know now bursts out of the engineer? If the aliens were inside the engineers all the time how come they didn't become like this all the time? If the aliens infected the engineers with face huggers or what ever they used then how come the planet wasn't teaming with the black aliens?

Godzilla I really love your thoughts on the film, mad props! Never thought about it that way...

My one big issue with the whole engineers populate the earth is it doesn't make any sense. How can humans have the same DNA as the Engineers but have different DNA then fish, monkeys, dinosaurs...ANYTHING! If the engineers populated earth then everything on earth should match the engineers DNA not just humans..,right?!

David says 'in order to create life you must destroy it first'. This simply means that most of human life on Earth is now going to perish when the aliens get there and colonise it, i.e. the aliens will flourish and multipy, the humans will die. The aliens' master plan is to use most of the population as 'incubators' and subjugate the remainder for the next stages. Not just on Earth but eventually all over the galaxy, all over their 3-d star map.

The confusion in the film, stems from the fact that the captain thinks that the Engineers created the aliens as some kind of weapon or biological experiment. If you turn this around, i.e. aliens creating (or at least controlling) pre-humans, it all makes sense. I think this is a deliberate attempt by the film writers to throw the audience and make the plot a little mysterious

Did like the conspiracy theory plots that were made especially for the 'net during the build-up to the movie.

I think Ridley Scott has again managed to subconsciously engage and question his audience about the use and possible manufacture of organic robots ( sometime in the near future I suppose ) in the way he did on his 1982 BladeRunner film.

That I think is more important than the plot in the film where finding out how humanity started.

One possibility to me is that the Engineers went looking for their origin and found the black goo. upon experimentation, they find the goo creates the xenomorph strand of life. I think the Aliens are one possible outcome of the goo: life form comes into contact with the goo(the worms in the room full of cannisters in Prometheus) and once it's allowd to impregnate and gestate in organic matter, it creates what we call the Xenomorphs, which as we know takes on certain traits of the host (the dog in Alien 3 for example). Obviously for some reason, the goo breaks down the engineer's bodies (perhaps their bodies are too artifically enhanced?) while it mutates other organic life forms (the worms and the other people who got infected in Prometheus). Pressumably the girl became impregnated because the infection was inside her body; or perhaps because it had already developed a little in the guy (sorry, I've forgotten all their names).

Perhaps that's why the Engineer at the begining was surprised: maybe he thought the goo would mutate him, but instead it broke him (or her?!) down into DNA.

Or:

The Xenomorphs were made as bio-weapons, and they seeded Earth as incubators for the Xenomorphs in a war we are yet to learn about. The humans following the "invitation" was a sign to the engineer that a planet is ripe for incudating. They send out signs saying "come and meet us" knowing that if a life form from that planet reached them, then there must be a substantial amount of sentient life on that planet in order for them to travel across space in the first place. And pressumably there'd be several of these facilities set up across the galaxy: hence, the other "space jkoey" we see in Alien, which was perhaps an outpost for another planet where life was seeded.

I see it as an experiment gone wrong. It could be at the time of the wall writings they intended on humans finding them. After a terrible accident all but 1 engineer had been infected and killed. When he saw the humans he had no choice but to kill them in fear of this stuff reaching back to earth. He could have possibly been going to save the earth which was now marked as infected by mistake.